I WAS PERMITTED TO return to my landing shuttle on the royal strand overlooking the Grand Colosseum, guarded as I had been guarded when I traveled to the coliseum dormitories to ask Switch to stand with me against Gilliam Vas. Almost I imagined the mutant priest and my traitor friend walked with me, bumping shoulders with the dozen Martians to where my guards waited with the pilot officer at the end of the dock.

The landing strip was one of several that ran out like fingers from the edge of the floating city platform, stretching out into the clouds. The wind snatched my cape and pulled it to one side as it gathered my hair in its fingers.

“I know that look,” Siran said, coming down the ramp. “What happened?”

I told her.

“Do you have to make enemies everywhere you go?”

In lieu of an answer, I tore the white cape from my shoulders and threw it at the bulkhead, where its magnetic clasp caught on the steel. It hung there like a flag. “Fetch me one of the spare kits, will you?”

The centurion nodded her shaved head and turned to move deeper into the shuttle. My personal armor was back aboard the Tamerlane and well outside my reach, but all our shuttles carried a few spare sets of combat equipment: armor and shield-belts, even weapons. Those weapons would not be cleared to leave the shuttle, not on Forum, but I had been permitted to retrieve my own armor from the shuttle—and so permitted an opportunity to speak to Siran, should whatever words I might say be my last.

Did the Empress want me dead? No. No, she could not. The Emperor wanted me alive. She only wanted to chastise me, to humiliate the Halfmortal on the most public stage in the galaxy, to destroy my name and the way men whispered it on the practice field and in dive bars across the Empire.

“Not one of the white ones!” I said, calling after Siran. “One of the Red Company combat kits. I’ll be damned if I go out wearing their colors.”

She emerged a moment later with a kit about the size of a large briefcase. Conscious of the Martians standing on the ramp behind me, I skinned out of my tunic and undershirt, wadding the clothing on the seat beside me. A moment later I was naked and pulling on the suit underlayment from inside the kit.

“Are you all right?” Siran asked.

“Fine,” I said.

“Your hands are shaking.”

I clenched them into fists. “I said I’m fine, Siran.” An oath escaped me, fierce and furious. “Stupid! Stupid, stupid!” I tugged the underlayment over my hands and arms and closed the seals. It snugged around me, and I reached for the red tunic and pulled it over my head. I had survived an assassination attempt, survived the Inquisition, and I was going to be brought down by drunk, stupid Prince Philip? Not assassinated, but character-assassinated live in the Grand Colosseum?

“Can I go with you, boss?” Siran’s voice cut across my seething and brought the boil down. I looked up, fingers mutely clicking through the latches and seals on the black and scarlet breastplate. My friend was watching me with narrowed eyes, brows furrowed and concerned. We had been myrmidons together. Soldiers together. I was a myrmidon again that day. Time cycles. Moments return. We cannot escape our patterns. The same choices—the same sins—return us to the same places. I was not bound for the Grand Colosseum, but a bone grass meadow in Borosevo to fight again, to pay in blood for the same sin: rage.

Was it rage?

Or pride?

I shook my head. “Single combat. But I don’t know what they’re throwing at me,” I told her, though I should have guessed.

She accepted this with the barest hint of a nod. “Well, you give ’em hell from us, Had.”

I delayed in answering just long enough to check my greaves and gauntlets were in place. Satisfied, I said, “I will.”

Siran offered her hand. I took it and pulled her close, embraced her. “Don’t you let us down,” she said. “You get your ass kicked, I’ll never let you hear the end of it.”

“The whole galaxy won’t let me hear the end of it,” I said to her, and let her go, and turning, I went out from shuttle and back to my guards, and passed with them out from under the clouds and the flying towers . . . and into legend.